I’m talking here about the shameless fawning by local news media sites over this golfing event. Local TV reporters, anchors and radio hosts might as well hand in their “journalist” credentials for pom poms and a baton to better lead this parade of unabashed marketing for an event that is not even a sport, in my book.

Nope. Most led with Ryder this and Ryder that before getting to the serious news stuff. I saw Bill Murray being light-heartedly interviewed and mumbling in his sleepy-eyed act about something that wasn’t that funny and barely coherent. No disrespect here. I still love you, Bill, in “Caddyshack.”

I saw cheery-eyed meteorologists gushing that the long-range forecast called for little to no rain throughout the event. I saw detailed reports on traffic and security logistics and that — get this — there will be watering holes along the 18-hole Hazeltine course in Chaska.

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Now, I understand that hosting this event here is a big deal. But golf to me is a bourgeoisie, elitist leisure activity enjoyed and played mostly by members of the discretionary income, dominant society here and in most countries of the world. To me, as the saying goes, what’s more boring than watching golf on TV? Golf on radio.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire the skill needed to play this well. I remember the first time I went to a driving range when I was a teenager. I grew up playing basketball and sandlot baseball, football and softball with a little boxing thrown in. How hard could it be hitting a little ball that was stationary, just waiting for you to whack it?

Well, I missed on the first swing. I was incredulous. I focused harder and made contact the second time. I envisioned one of those sky-high, long arc drives I’ve seen on TV. The ball went about 150 yards on a slight curve, but did not rise above a foot. Um, I said to myself, this is a little harder than I thought.

Yet, unless it involves running, profusely sweating, or trying to hit or shoot a ball or avoid someone coming at me, golf remains a leisure pastime in my eyes, much like bowling, curling, bocce ball or chess. I mean, really, the participants are wearing nice slacks and a polo shirt and have someone else tote their equipment around, for crying out loud. I might pick it up when I’m about 90, God willing, and can no longer hoop or round the bases.

Given all that, to my surprise, I turned defensive to a column written this week by a British bloke named Pete Willett. The brother of some British golfer I never heard of, he writes a column for the National Club Golfer.

Europe’s Danny Willett catches a ball on the range before a practice round for the Ryder Cup golf tournament Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016, at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

After penning some inside-golf navel-gazing thoughts that made him appear sharp or full of himself, he went out of his way to slyly note that Team USA has won only five of the 16 Ryder Cups and that four of the five were won on home soil. Then he let loose.

“For the Americans to stand a chance of winning, they need their baying mob of imbeciles to caress their egos every step of the way,” he wrote. “Like one of those brainless bastards from your childhood, the one that pulled down your shorts during the school’s Christmas assembly … they only have the courage to keg you if they’re backed up by a giggling group of reprobates. Team Europe needs to shut those groupies up.”

But wait. There’s more:

“They need to silence the pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hotdog so they can scream ‘Baba booey’ until their jelly faces turn red,” he added. “They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators and belting out a mini-erection-inducing ‘mashed potato,’ hoping to impress their cousin.”

And, just in case didn’t get his gist on things …

“They need to smash the obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth, Lego man hair, medicated ex-wives, and resentful children,” he ranted. “Squeezed into their cargo shorts and boating shoes, they’ll bellow ‘get in the hole’ whilst high-fiving all the other members of the Dentists’ Big Game Hunt Society.”

How dare he. He has no right to say such insulting filth. Only we Americans can say this about ourselves.

Still, he has inspired me to actually give a rat’s you-know-what now about this Ryder Cup thing. I’m rooting hard for the home team, though I have no clue who’s on it. I might even tune in on radio if I have nothing better to do.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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